Weekly Meeting

10 December 2020 Zoom Meeting – ChildLine/NSPCC – Katie Bannister

Katie is based in rural Norfolk as the ChildLine Co-ordinator for ChildLine Nottingham, currently with 96 volunteers (under normal circumstances 160).  She explained Childline was founded in 1986 but joined forces with the NSPCC in 2006 to support and help more children and young people across the UK.

She outlined the 10 most common reasons for a child to contact them from the last annual review:

1.       Mental or emotional Health issues (Anxiety, loneliness…)

2.       Family relationships

3.       Suicidal thoughts or feelings

4.       Bullying                                                                                                                               

5.       Self-harm

6.       Friendship issues

7.       Sex, relationships, puberty or sexual health

8.       Problems in school or with education

9.       Sexual abuse (including online sexual abuse)

10.   Physical abuse

Katie emphasized their confidentiality statement, such that no calls are recorded and they use technology such that the child’s telephone call does not appear on their parents account. She indicated that sexual abuse may not always be reported to the appropriate authorities without the child’s permission, so that the power for action is passed back to the child.

In 2018/19 they had 250,281 counselling sessions, but are still unable to respond to 1 in 3 children who contacted.

They are constantly looking for volunteers, but offer a comprehensive 12 to 14 week training course, but have to agree to perform a 4 hour shift for at least 40 weeks per year.

Katie then took questions which she fielded very well, ranging from:

Do volunteers have to attend the base or can they just use their phone? On-line email correspondence will be coming shortly 

Where are the bases & how many? 12 (Nottingham and Birmingham in the Midlands)

How many calls would you average in a 4 hour shift? 4 is probably the average, but obviously that depends on the nature of the call…some can last 1.5 hours

What’s the average age of the children?  Generally over 5, but mostly teenagers

What percentage are about abuse? From the last review sexual abuse was 4% on contacts and physical abuse was 3%

How do you determine where the child lives if there are serious problems? We work with the child to try to establish this but there is technology to help.

Have the numbers increased during the pandemic?  I cannot confirm this until our next annual review

What feedback do you get? Some, but not necessarily to the volunteer involved.  However, there is a forum and Dame Esther has put some feedback interviews on You Tube.

What’s the demography of the volunteers? It’s a mix mostly, women and mostly retired people, with a good mix of students (generally studying psychology or counselling)

Is it intentional to keep ChildLine and NSPCC separate? Different target audiences, children and adults for NSPCC.

It was mentioned that in our formative years our Club had organised a concert to raise funds for ChildLine, which were presented personally to Dame Esther.

Stan gave a Vote of thanks, expressing what an interesting presentation we had received, how strong ChildLine has developed and our appreciation for Katie joining our Zoom Meeting, which was well supported with ‘visual applause’                                                                                                 AR